London Prepared Update

Exercise Unified Response

This week saw the official launch of Exercise Unified Response, at a conference in the Guildhall. The day involved a briefing on of EUR and the EU civil protection mechanism, together with UK and EU experiences of civil protection and best practice from past EU-sponsored exercises.

The event was opened by London Fire Brigade Commissioner Ron Dobson, with speakers from LFB, MPS, LAS, 4C Strategies (who are sponsoring the event), European Commission Emergency Response Coordination Centre and the Chairman of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, Gareth Bacon.

See our @Ldn_Prepared twitter account for tweets from partners attending the day.

Exercise Tower Guardian

Exercise Tower Guardian took place on Tuesday 19 January 2016, involving more than 70 London Fire Brigade personnel and numerous resources. This was an opportunity for LFB to test their response to fires and other emergencies at historic and listed buildings, validating procedures developed for damage control and the salvage of priceless artefacts and collections. LFB was supported by Police, London Ambulance Service and emergency planning officers from Tower Hamlets council.

Cyber risk

We met with City of London Police during the week – to discuss a issues ranging from risk to learning lessons. A particular focus was “cyber” - the police have a particular interest in preventing and investigating cyber crime but all of us, whether as responders or as individuals, should take an interest. The term cyber covers a whole range of activities from social media through commerce to the internet of things. It creates opportunity (I’ll be watching a downloaded TV programme on my way home tonight) but also new vulnerabilities which are only just becoming clear. This includes fraud but the potential for deliberate attack as well. The Oxford Martin Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre is developing a benchmarking tool – we are all going to do a little bit more to understand cyber vulnerabilities and the things we can do to manage them.

Weather and flooding

Met Office

A rather unsettled spell of weather is expected for London over the coming days with periods of rain and breezy conditions at times, although no significant resilience issues are currently expected. Temperatures are likely to be less cold than recent days, especially on Sunday when there is the potential for it to become very mild for the time of year.

Looking further ahead into next week, it is expected to remain very unsettled with further wet and windy conditions at times and temperatures varying widely from day to day. There is the potential for a brief very windy spell during Monday but there is still much uncertainty around this and the situation will continue to be monitored.